Simnel Cake/British-Style Moist Fruit Cake

Simnel Cake/British-Style Moist Fruit Cake

Easter passed so quickly, but where we live it brought bluebells in the woods, wisteria blooming on the walls of the nearby manor, bright blossoms in our own garden and Simnel cake. Although the festival is gone we are still enjoying this as a regular moist fruit cake by using the recipe below but leaving out the marzipan. It is delicious with a slice of good British cheese.

Over the past few months I've been baking as I imagine some of my forebears might have done - special breads for festivals and in between a tried and trusted mixed grain sourdough to feed the household in good times and bad.

I've loved attempting festival breads from other cultures. Making panettone was particularly enjoyable and I still hope to attempt colomba. However this Easter I chose Simnel cake for a number of reasons: we normally buy a slice to celebrate the season; it is one of my husband's favourite cakes and it is one of the few typically British festival cakes that is special to its time, that you can't buy all year round.

I've thought about trying Simnel cake before but lacked the confidence to try it. It's testimony to the support I've had on TFL that I felt confident enough to tackle it this time round. Thank you all.

Legend has it that Simnel cake was made traditionally by mothers and daughters together on Mothering Sunday. I can see why it would be good to have more than one pair of hands on the job. It's quite a complex cake and the baker would probably benefit from having someone else to turn the spoon, mop their fevered brow when the going got tough and share in the final feast!

We have benefited from the brilliant cake making skills of friends and family in times past and it was so good to finally feel confident enough to return the gift, Thanks D, D and J for all your wonderful cakes and for being patient about the delayed cake love on our part! Here it comes now…

I am not good at making more conventional celebration cakes with icing or frosting, as I have the piping skills of a pterodactyl, or some other creature without opposable fingers and thumbs. I also love almonds and fruit cake, so Simnel cake, with its fruity body, marzipan covered top and middle and toasted marzipan balls is my kind of festive cake.

The account below is more or less the story of my first Simnel cake. I haven't done this enough times to advise on the best way to approach each part, but simply offer this as a record of a 'cake journey'.

The cake I made was an fusion of two recipes gleaned from the Internet. I needed the mixture to fill our cake tin so took the general ingredient amounts from Recipe 1 but added almond flour and an internal marzipan layer, as in Recipe 2. I preferred the more detailed method outlined in Recipe 2 so followed that. The idea of soaking the dried fruits in sherry also appealed:

The whole cake making journey nearly ground to a halt at the start, however. We had no high sided cake tin when I gamely started the process by plunging my hands into the butter and sugar. This mixture was half way up my arms (and I was missing my uplifting music to hand mix to because the cd was jammed, itunes was stuck and our city lacks the amazing strolling Tuna bands I used to listen to when living in Granada), when my husband rang to say there were no 7" cake tins at the homewares store, not even for ready money… All was saved, however, when he spotted a little 7.5 inch beauty at the very back of the shelf. This depth tin also fitted the only deep decorative ribbon we had in the house - serendipity!

So the measurements and method I give below are for a 3 egg cake suitable for a 7 or 7.5 inch high sided cake tin. There are also some reflections on the marzipan making and on baking.

Cake Ingredients

175g/6oz muscovado sugar

3 free-range eggs, beaten

175g/6oz plain flour

175g/6oz butter

50g almond flour

Pinch salt

1/4 tsp/1/2 coffee spoon ground mixed spice

350g/12oz mixed raisins, currants and sultanas

55g/2oz chopped mixed peel and glacé cherries

Grated zest of 1/2 lemon.

50ml of light sherry (I used Hidalgo La Gitana

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Glaze

1-2 tablespoons apricot jam

Marzipan - see below

Method

At least 12 hours before baking, soak the raisin mix plus any glacé fruit and candied peel in 50ml of dry sherry. I found it easiest to do this in a kilner/mason jar.

On baking day: Prepare the cake tin by buttering it. Line the bottom and sides with [buttered] parchment, if required. (I did this).

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. It is important to create a light mixture and this may take a few minutes. By hand it can take 10 minutes or more.

Gently fold alternate amounts of flour mix and egg into the creamed batter, until all is incorporated.

Stir in the fruit mix (some bakers dust the fruit lightly with flour).

Let the mixture sit, covered, for 10 minutes.

Spoon half of the mixture into the cake tin and smooth gently.

Cover the first half with a marzipan circle. Try not to press down too hard as this will compress the batter underneath.

Cover the circle with the remaining cake mixture.

Smooth off the top.

Baking

I found when looking into the baking of Simnel cakes that instructions for baking a 3 egg cake differed wildly, from just 1 3/4 hours at 140C/275F to 2 3/4 - 3 1/4 hours at 150C/300F. I am also sure that this is a recipe that will bake differently in different ovens so the notes below are a rough guide only.

Baking in my simple gas oven I have gone for a middle path, baking the cake in a preheated oven for 2 1/4 hours.

If I want a moist cake (because I am preparing the cake in advance or am baking it to mail and will need a cake that cake that can mature without drying out), I bake at 150C/300F for 1 3/4 hours 45 minutes, 150C/300F for 15 minutes and then leave the cake in the oven with the heat off for another 15 minutes.

I have also baked this mixture without the marzipan as a medium, moist fruit cake to eat straight away and in that case I have baked for the whole 2 1/4 hours at 150C/300F.

If your oven is particularly strong you might consider tenting the cake with silver foil in the last stages to avoid burning the top before the middle is cooked.

Leave the cake to cool in the tin from anywhere to 15 minutes to an hour depending on preference, then turn onto a cooling rack.

Once cool, glaze the top of the cake with apricot jam and place the second marzipan circle carefully on top.

Glaze the top of the marzipan with apricot jam also (or egg if you prefer), and place the marzipan balls in a circle on top.

Toast the cake briefly under a preheated grill until the top just begins to turn golden. My husband gamely assisted with this, taking it out at just the right moment! This took less than 2 minutes under our grill.

Marzipan

I knew from the start that I wanted to make my own marzipan and that I wanted it to be egg free, as not everyone in our family can eat raw egg. I also wanted the cake to be good to eat after posting.

Moro's Sam and Sam Clark note that when making marzipan with fresh Spanish almonds they don't need to add egg as the oil in the almonds acts as the binding agent. This fits with what I have found when using almonds from a friend's Spanish finca and have struggled to find such fresh almonds in the UK. However, I also discovered that in the Middle Ages British marzipan was made in this way, with rose water added to some versions, and that this is the way it is still made in many Asian cultures.

I had also read that one common problem with Simnel cakes is that the marzipan layer simply melts during baking. As sugar has a high boiling point I reckoned that using an eggless marzipan with a high sugar content would help to stop this happening, which it did.

I followed a formula that uses sugar syrup taken to soft ball stage. If you prefer not to use sugar syrup (which can burn badly if you accidentally touch it or spill it on yourself), recipes on links below give formulae for egg free marzipan with unmelted sugar. {Trust me I know about the burn part, having followed a recipe that suggested you 'roll the sugar ball between your finger and thumb' to test its consistency. I did this and watched my thumb blow up to something that resembled a barley sugar in its size and translucent orange colour. After that it was no touching the sugar and gloves all the way…)

The day before baking, I prepared 550g of marzipan using proportions in the formula below. Another time I would prepare more, to make thicker marzipan layers and to leave more for the decorative balls. The formula as I give it below makes about 730g.

The marzipan produced by this sugar syrup method is quite crumbly, like the lovely marzipan found in German and Austrian sweets. For the Simnel cake, however, it needed to be more malleable, in order to be rolled out. Therefore, on baking day I hydrated the marzipan by adding sunflower oil, little by little, until the marzipan was soft enough to roll without cracking. That took about 8 tablespoons of oil. Glycerin can also be used. Having prepared almond paste again to fill an ensaimada, and finding that I needed far less oil, I'm even more convinced that the amount of oil used is closely linked to the freshness of the almonds. So in this case be guided by your own nuts, as it were.

I prepared one marzipan layer before baking and one while the cake was cooling. However, another time I would prepare both together, as the un-oiled marzipan began to stiffen again when returned to the fridge.

Marzipan/Almond paste with sugar syrup

190g sugar

236g water

Cook this to the end of the soft ball stage, or 240F

Then add:

250g ground almonds: (add these first if the mixture is still hot or it will spit

30g water

15g rose water

Small capful (approx. 1/2 coffee spoon), of natural vanilla essence

Small capful (approx. 1/2 coffee spoon), of natural almond essence

Mix thoroughly

If using for Simnel cake, add oil or glycerin little by little until the paste can be rolled out without cracking

Pushed down too hard at the right hand side but marzipan makes it through baking, phew.

More even marzipan on the other side but where is the rest of the cake?

Cake before grilling

DH pulls the cake out at just the right time

Crumb shot

All done and dusted: cake in the once sunny garden.

Marzipan balls

Legend has it that the balls on the top of the Simnel Cake represent 11 disciples, excluding Judas. Poor Matthias elected after Judas' departure seems not to have been granted a ball!

I am quite nervous of cake decorating and it soon became apparent that the British 'turn out a hearty dollop' approach to making scones and rock cakes was not going to work with the marzipan balls. Decoration on this cake is minimal so If the balls are not similar in size the overall effect can be a bit odd. I really have to thank Akiko for pointing me to a biscuit making technique that helped to get the balls more even. This involves rolling the dough into a long rectangular or circular roll, chilling it for 15-20 mins and then cutting it carefully into even sections using a tape measure or ruler. I followed this up by weighting the segments, until I had 11 of 10-11g each, which I palmed into a ball, as a baker shaped buns. (Pictures below for marzipan roll and square biscuits). My apologies to experienced cake makers for whole making decorative balls is second nature! I thought it worth including for beginners such as myself, as many recipes just say 'put the balls on the top of the cake', which is a bit baffling if you are new to all this.

Again this is a record of my first marzipan ball making journey. It is not a 'how to do it' instruction, although it worked quite well. There are likely to be ways of improving on this and I look forward to finding them out.

If you make this as a Simnel cake or regular moist fruit cake I do hope you enjoy it.